Over the course of two years, Compass (with Value Scope Research) has worked with the Australian Centre for Excellence in Risk Analysis (ACERA) to help apply Structured Decision Making approaches to the management of plant biosecurity threats in Australia. Like most countries, Australia currently applies risk assessment-based approaches to the prevention and management of invasive pests (in this context, mainly insects and fungal diseases). SDM approaches to this problem are in many ways similar, but additionally introduce more explicit notions that are important to decision making, including a) explicit recognition of uncertainties b) more explicit use of probabilities and expected values and c) formal use of trade-off analysis across multiple objectives (including recognition of resource constraints and notions of ‘risk-return’) and trade-offs across the biosecurity continuum (i.e. pre-border, border, post-border).

In one sample application, Compass partnered with ACERA and CSIRO to develop a workshop for senior federal and state government officials that considered response strategies to an outbreak of Myrtle Rust, a potentially highly damaging invasive fungus.